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KYIV: Ukraine is intensifying its efforts to defend the strategic hub of Pokrovsk, aiming to secure key supply and evacuation routes and root out Russian infantry infiltrating the city, the top army commander said on Thursday.
Oleksandr Syrskyi said he visited the area to meet his troops as Russia — almost four years into its invasion of Ukraine — continued to increase its assaults.
He dismissed Moscow’s assertion that its forces had trapped the Ukrainian troops inside the eastern stronghold. “The enemy infantry, avoiding combat, is gathering in urban areas and changing locations, so the primary task is to locate and destroy them,” Syrskyi said on the Telegram app.
Russia has been inching toward Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region for more than a year, slowly but steadily taking control of the small villages to its south.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said that at least 200 Russian military personnel entered the city in separate groups as small-arms firefights raged in the former logistics hub. Ukraine was taking steps to “strengthen the stability of defenses” in the city and aimed at bolstering its logistics by improving defense of supply and evacuation routes, Syrskyi said.
“The main priority is to save the lives of our soldiers,” he said. Logistics for the city were complicated due to Russia’s FPV drones “but possible,” Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps operating in the area said in a statement on Facebook. The brigade added that Russia mostly used infantry to attack Pokrovsk, but also deployed armed vehicles to advance on Myrnohrad, around 6 km (4 miles) to the northeast.

KYIV: The latest in a sustained Russian campaign of massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure brought power outages and restrictions in all the country’s regions Thursday, officials said, with the Ukrainian prime minister describing Moscow’s tactic as “systematic energy terror.”
The strikes, which were the latest in Russia’s almost daily attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as bitter winter temperatures approach, killed at least three people, including a 7-year-old girl, according to authorities. Children between 2 and 16 years of age were among the 17 injured.
Russian launched more than 650 drones and more than 50 missiles of various types in the attack, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Ukrainian cities use centralized public infrastructure to run water, sewage and heating systems, and blackouts stop from them working. Months of attacks have aimed to erode Ukrainian morale as well as disrupt weapons manufacturing and other war-related activity almost four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
“Russia continues its systematic energy terror — striking at the lives, dignity, and warmth of Ukrainians on the eve of winter. Its goal is to plunge Ukraine into darkness; ours is to keep the light on,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said.
“To stop this terror, Ukraine needs more air defense systems, tougher sanctions, and maximum pressure on (Russia),” she added, referring to fruitless US-led diplomatic efforts to make Russia enter negotiations for a peace settlement.
Strikes in the southern Zaporizhzhia region injured 17 people, including a 2-year-old girl, regional authorities said. Rescuers pulled a man from the rubble of a building, but he did not survive, according to Ivan Fedorov, head of the Zaporizhzhia regional administration. A second person was also killed in Zaporizhzhia.
A 7-year-old girl died in hospital from her injuries in Ukraine’s central-west Vinnytsia region, regional governor Nataliia Zobolotna said.
Two energy infrastructure facilities were damaged in the western Lviv region, near the border with Poland, local authorities said.
The Polish military said that it scrambled Polish and allied NATO aircraft as a preventive measure due to the Russian attack on Ukrainian territory. The Polish regional airports in Radom and Lublin were closed to ensure the military freedom of operation, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency said.